AFTER A LONG STRUGGLE, 104 SOVIET JEWS ARRIVE

NEW YORK -- A group of 104 Jews, including some whose struggle to emigrate from the Soviet Union lasted 14 years, arrived in the United States Wednesday in time to celebrate the Jewish holiday of freedom from oppression.

Throngs of relatives and friends, with tear-filled eyes and bearing flowers, dashed to meet the new immigrants, who included 84 Soviets, 14 Iranians and six Romanians. Among them was a Romanian couple who defected by traveling through Hungary and using fake passports to cross into Austria.

The murmurs of the waiting crowd rose to cries of happiness with a burst of applause as the new immigrants emerged from the U.S. Customs area at Kennedy Airport at 4:45 p.m. after an eight-hour flight.

The Soviet group of 84 was "the largest group in many, many years" to arrive in the United States, said Robert Israeloff, president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

"It's particularly poignant because it's in time for Passover," said Israeloff, referring to next week's celebration of the Hebrew escape from slavery in Egypt. "Some of these people applied to leave 14 years ago."

Andre Horovitz, 29, an engineer from Little Ferry, N.J., said his parents were denied exit visas from Romania but sneaked out with fake passports during a trip to Hungary, another Soviet bloc country.

"They are really defecting. It's a wild story," said Horovitz, who had not seen his parents, Erika 57, and Theodore, 61, in nearly four years.

"They just crossed the border to Austria and contacted HIAS," the international aid group, he said.

Among the first new arrivals to emerge through Customs were Dina and Arkady Goldman and their daughter, Ann, greeted by Vladimir Goldman, 25, of Brooklyn.

An exhausted Dina Goldman, holding her daughter, whose 3rd birthday coincided with the day of their arrival, said, "It was a very difficult trip, very long, very tiring."

She said she felt, "OK," adding, "If I can get excited, if it is possible after seven years of refusal."

Of her plans, she said, "The first thing I am going to do is rest. Then I'm going to start looking for work."